Felicity Huffman turns her desperate housewife image on its head in “Transamerica.” She plays Bree, formerly Stanley, a transsexual who finds out a week before her operation that she has a son, Toby, she never knew about and now has to retrieve from jail. As she and Toby make their way back to Los Angeles so she can undergo her operation, they both have to overcome personal inhibitions and issues.

Jill Blackledge: “Transamerica” is getting a lot of buzz, especially with the Oscars a week away, and I can see why. It puts an interesting twist on the traditional parent-child relationship story, and Felicity Huffman delivers an amazing performance here. She proves her versatility because she’s made a name for herself playing a sexpot on “Desperate Housewives” and she’s at the other end of the spectrum here.

Andrew Schmeisser: Certainly an interesting move for Huffman, as she achieved her main fame from playing the producer on “Sports Night” and followed up by some show about housewives. In regards to “Transamerica,” she did deliver a good performance as Bree outside her normal realm of acting. I’m very interested to see how it does at the Oscars this year.

JB: Although the story is very good overall, I felt it had problems in taking the audience exactly where it wanted them. It has a general sense of direction, and while it finally reaches its destination, the characters and the story were taken on so many side roads that the ending felt cheated. I thought it started out as a very focused movie, but as it went on it started to wind. Perhaps that’s because the characters are so complex that when each new piece of information is revealed the story twists, causing it to wind at the end.

AS: It’s unfortunate, however, that Huffman’s performance couldn’t carry the movie, as it followed very limited direction and seemed to have too many diversions from the main plot. I felt the ending was slightly abrupt given the many different sidebars that the characters had.

JB: The movie asks so many questions and raises so many points of consideration that I think it just tries to tackle too much. I think the subject matter was presented very well, but in the end, I felt the movie left me with more unanswered questions than answered ones.

AS: I liked the fact that the movie tried to attack lots of different issues, but it failed to follow through and address those issues. That style of presentation would be great for a television show, but in a roughly two-hour movie, they should really just focus on the main issues at hand.

JB: I felt that the characters were what drove the story. Although this movie follows the experiences of a transsexual, there are themes to which everyone can relate in the movie. The characters struggle with who they are and who they want to be, as well as others’ acceptance of their decisions. These are issues everyone faces, especially with their parents.

AS: The characters are what made the story flow, but I can’t say that it was the characters that made the story move. For this kind of movie (father reunites with long-lost troubled son), one would expect the characters to excel at driving the story along, but with a basically unoriginal story, the actors would have to work pretty hard to make the story and characters come alive. I’m sorry to say it, but this story was floundering and failing.

JB: Since the film is really about the characters, I can overlook some of the plot defaults, because the movie works in the long run. I think all of Huffman’s accolades are well deserved. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast didn’t work quite as well. Perhaps that stems from Huffman’s main character status or the awkward relationships between the characters, but her performance definitely stands out in an otherwise small movie.

AS: I can definitely understand why Huffman’s performance has earned her many praises, but as a whole the movie doesn’t quite hit the mark. I felt that Huffman was – unfortunately – the one character worth watching in this new twist on an old story.